1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to an image processing apparatus and method and, more particularly, to an image processing apparatus and method for processing a captured or recorded image.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With the development of technology and the increasing demands of people's daily lives, digital image capturing/recording systems, such as webcamcorder, digital still camera, digital video camera, are developed and replaced at high speed. Furthermore, electronic devices integrated with digital image capturing/recording system, such as mobile phone and PDA, have become the major electronic utilities of the consumer electronic product market.
Please refer to FIG. 1, which shows a functional block of an image processing apparatus of the prior art. The image processing apparatus 7 applies an image sensor 72, such as a CCD or CMOS, to transfer the optical signal to electronic signal, that is raw data. The raw data can further be processed by an image pipeline 74 to become an output image, such as YUV image. Subsequently, the output image can be stored in an external memory 76. Moreover, the output image can further be processed by an encoder 78 to become a formatted image, such as JPEG format image or MPEG format image, that complies with an image format, and the formatted image can be stored in the external memory 76.
Please further refer to FIG. 2, which shows a functional block of another image processing apparatus of the prior art. As shown in FIG. 2, in the prior art, to process images with increasing size, the raw data obtained by the image sensor 82 are first divided into a plurality of fragments, then the fragments are further stored in a plurality of buffers 84. Afterward, the fragments are also sequentially processed by the image pipeline 86. Therefore, the width of the buffers 84 is equal to the width of the raw data. When the number of raw data increases (the width of the raw data increases), the width of the buffers has to be increased; thus, the hardware cost is also increased.